Welcome to the ongoing saga of my new life in Italy. Starting with an innocent masters program in gastronomic science, I was seduced subsequently into the dream of making a fine wine in the Marche. It's a work in progress, welcome to the story of Nascondiglio di Bacco,

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

9 settembreI enjoyed attending my 1st real wedding in Italy this past weekend as Marta and Alessio tied the knot and then headed for Maui. I had been to a post wedding party before, but this was the church ceremony with a full wedding mass etc. Saturday was the most humid day we had all summer so the poor men in their wool suits suffered a bit, but all was forgotten after the 3rd prosecco. The reception was followed by a nice dinner with Banfi wines and then dancing with KC and the Sunshine band leading things off. Of course, many traditions are the same, with toasts given, everyone clamoring for Baci! (kisses between the newlyweds) throwing of the bouquet etc. Today, I finished pruning the last olive tree. Yesterday I suffered my 1st injury of the season. I am not sure whether the music in my ipod was too "allegra" or I had drunk too much caffeine, but I exited one of the trees a bit too fast and scraped away the epidermis in a beautiful 6 inch "S" shape from my right leg. I had to recompose myself for about 5 minutes and decide whether to continue, but after the bleeding stopped, I finished another 14 trees and the last 3.5, I finished today. The olives are changing colors as you can see by the picture I enclosed and we are considering harvesting the tenere olives in the next couple of days as they are early maturing and used for the famous stuffed olives called olive ascolane.We did harvest the white grapes yesterday and again this year tied them on the cables to dry. Hopefully, we can make a passito from this year's crop which will equal last years in quality.Wednesday night, we are serving up a BBQ with meat from the most famous butcher in Italy, Cecchini from Tuscany and hopefully we can start a tradition here which we practiced for decades in KC where everyone brings a nice wine to match the dinner. The theme-tuscan wines of course!I will have all the details later. Finally, thanks to everyone for following along with my adventure. In the next day or two, I will have received my 10,000th visitor to the new life of dwight. As always, feel free to leave comments. You just need to sign in.dwight